


Countless Stars and Parallel Universes

by Moron1



Series: Egoist [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Bandits & Outlaws, F/F, Haruno Sakura-centric, Making Out, Mission Fic, No Smut, Strong Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23511250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moron1/pseuds/Moron1
Summary: Sakura takes a different turn this time.If the boys are allowed to be selfish and reckless, why isn’t she?AKA Sakura takes up bounty hunting instead of becoming the Hokage’s apprentice.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Inuzuka Hana
Series: Egoist [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691728
Comments: 4
Kudos: 142





	Countless Stars and Parallel Universes

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven’t listened to it yet, LOONA member Olivia Hye’s solo song Egoist is like the perfect ‘Sakura getting over Sasuke after he leaves’ song. Also, it’s a bop, she’s hot, and I’m gay.
> 
> I… didn’t think about ages again… Let’s just… age some characters up and others down… So uh, Sakura’s like 15? And Hana’s 17. Because ew.

Sakura has always known that the other members of her team would surpass her and that she would be left behind. It was a fact, the same as her hair was pink and the sky was blue.

And for the most part, she was okay with that. She didn’t have any dreams of ultimate power or fame, just wanted a life that she felt happy with. But Orochimaru’s invasion of Konoha put all thoughts of marriage and kids and general happiness off to the side. She could come back to that later.

In the meantime, Konoha was a wreck. 

Rebuilding the housing, shops, and other parts of the infrastructure was one thing, with all of the free and mostly uninjured shinobi pitching in help, including one man who seemed to have the Mokuton who was growing trees to replace the ones lost, but the rebuilding effort cost Konoha a huge amount of money, landing them in a similar state that Suna was, financially.

That had been their goal, as far as Sakura could tell. And it definitely worked.

All shinobi who were capable of doing so were sent out on missions, some of higher rank than they’d normally take, others just solo missions instead of with a team. Everyone was to do their part to keep Konoha afloat. And since both Naruto and Sasuke had left, it was up to her to get things done.

Her first few missions were with a Chunin to teach her a couple of things and make sure that she would be able to do them by herself in the future.

D-rank missions were a rarity with almost everyone in-village doing their best to save money, so they were passed onto the academy students to give them some practical training. It became a fairly common sight to see a horde of small children helping stack bricks or clear fields under the supervision of an academy teacher.

Having another C-rank scared Sakura slightly, recalling the terrifying experience of holding Sasuke’s body for those excruciating moments until he turned out to be alive. But things like that happen to people like Naruto and Sasuke, people who the world revolves around. Sakura sometimes feels like a background character in her own life, but without those two to bring on the danger, she’d probably be okay.

But just in case, she packed extra shuriken, kunai, bandages, anything that she could scrounge from the remains of her old academy supplies.

Sakura’s house had been one of the ones flattened in the invasion, but her parents had luckily been in the stands to watch her at her fight and had been safely escorted out of the arena, safe and sound. Their new apartment was small, tiny compared to what their house had been, but it was worth having her parents safe and sound.

She was actually pretty glad to be out of the apartment on a mission because it was a pretty small room and her parents would probably appreciate the quiet-time. Also, it would be something to take her mind off Sasuke for once. Lingering in the village and staring at the bench that he left her on couldn’t be healthy.

Sakura got dressed in her new clothes, the ones that she had bought after most of her pretty dresses were destroyed. She took it as a sign that she should buy some more durable clothes, and she ended up with a few mesh shirts, the type reinforced by metal, as well as some durable pants. The actual shirts were similar in style to her old dresses but made out of tougher material than the silk that they were made of.

She walked out the door with a short goodbye to her parents before strolling out to the mission desk to find out who her supervisory chunin was.

There were quite a few shinobi lingering around the building, most there for their own missions, but some seemed to just be loitering and hanging out. She looked around to see if she could tell who it was that she was looking for, but no one really stood out. 

Sakura stood there looking lost for a couple of minutes before an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her flush against a warm body. She squealed in surprise, twisting to find that it was Inuzuka Hana, Kiba’s sister.

She and Kiba were never really close, but she’d have to be blind to not notice the resemblance and deaf to have forgotten the raging arguments that they used to have when she picked him up from school.

“So...I’m guessing that you’re my chunin escort, Hana-san?” Sakura was still far too close to Hana for her comfort, and a blush was quickly working its way across her face. 

Hana grinned toothily, and threw an arm around Sakura’s shoulders, gently tugging her towards the direction of the main gate. Where the main gate used to be. Whatever.

“We’re doing a bandit hunt today, kiddo.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Let’s make a deal. You drop the honorific, and I’ll call you by your name.”

“Sure, Hana.”

“Alright, Sakura.”

“Ok. So, where are we going?”

“There’ve been some reports of bandits on the border with Cha no Kuni, so we’re going to check that out and maybe bash some skulls. Either way, we’re getting paid pretty good.”

Sakura nodded, hefting her travel bag on her back and getting ready for a long trek.

The two of them and the Haimaru Brothers traveled for several hours, not stopping for many breaks. It would have taken a civilian several days to make the trip, but at a shinobi’s pace, they got there much faster.

There was a period of a week or two between every raid that they had made previously, and the most recent town had been robbed three days prior to their trip, so they had time. Hana determined that it would be best to have a camp set in a midpoint between the town that was attacked and the one closest, so that they could return to a single place after they traveled anywhere withing the predicted radius.

Sakura helped make a shelter in a fairly wooded area, making it as indistinguishable from the rest of the foliage as she could. It wasn’t likely that the bandits would be in this area, but if they were they shouldn’t be able to find them.

They set up a tent under a low-hanging tree, curled up, and went to sleep so that they’d be refreshed for the next day.

Sakura woke up the next morning bleary-eyed and slightly confused. She was snuggled up against Hana, who had an arm thrown over her body and a leg tucked between hers. Sakura withheld any noises of embarrassment and, figuring that getting up would just make it awkward, curled back into Hana and went back to sleep.

She woke up again at least a few hours later, if she judged the amount of light shining through the thin walls of the tent correctly. Sakura stumbled out of the tent with the blanket still pulled around her shoulders, finding Hana squatted next to a small fire.

“I’m making breakfast, you want some?”

Sakura nodded, and made her way over, plopping down on Hana’s left side.

“I’ll make lunch!”

“Are you any good at cooking?”

“I’m… okay. I can do campfire meals, at least.”

“Better than Kiba. He can’t even boil water, he won’t be cooking for anyone anytime soon.”

“Neither will I, if it’s not a mission. It’s not like I have anyone to cook for.”

“You really have just zero love life, don’t you?”

“That’s not even what I was talking about! But yeah, I haven’t even had my first kiss, not for lack of trying…”

“Really? A cute girl like you doesn’t have all the boys running after her? Or, y’know, any cute girls?”

Sakura shifted a bit closer as she spoke. “No, but it’s not like I’ve got many prospects in my age group. My teammates are idiots and gay for each other, same with your brother and Shino. You know what, Chouji and Shikamaru as well.”

“And… the girls?”

“One’s my rival, the other had a hopeless crush on Naruto for like, 5 years. So, nope.”

“Well,” and when Hana smiled, her teeth looked sharper than normal, “Maybe you should try dating a bit outside your age group.”

Sakura blushed, but before she got into her head and started panicking, she made the bold move to press her lips against the other girl’s.

Hana moved in further, opening her mouth and sweeping her tongue across Sakura’s lips, which she opened in a small gasp. The older girl licked into her mouth, tangling her tongue with Sakura’s and kissing her deeply.

Hana grabbed her by the backs of her thighs and pulled her in, and Sakura wrapped her legs around her waist automatically. She ground down onto Hana’s lap and tangled her hands in her hair, panting as Hana transferred her attentions to Sakura’s neck.

Hana hoisted Sakura up and staggered back into the tent, tumbling onto the thin mat. 

They didn’t end up eating lunch.

Once they reached the latest town that had reported being raided, it was only a matter of meeting with the man in charge, an older man who directed them to the most recent place that had been robbed. They had ransacked it both for food and valuables, which meant that they were likely not affiliated with any one place, more of a roaming band than anything.

Hana and the Haimaru Brothers managed to track the bandits halfway to the next town over, and they settled into the trees surrounding the bandit’s campsite.

While sat in the trees, Hana gave instructions on how to take the bandits down, signing out the orders so that they would stay unheard. If they could take out the leader first, the group would likely be less able to react with any sort of cohesion. But they would pick off any bandits that they could before they started their actual attack, as long as they could do it without attracting attention.

One man broke off from the group, heading to urinate on one of the trees. Sakura dropped down and broke his neck with one hard twist, lowering the body down gently. She looked back up and Hana shot her a wink and a smile.

They waited for a couple more minutes, but it didn’t seem like any more of the bandits would break off from the group.

Hana gave her the signal to proceed and leaped out from the tree she was in, hurling a kunai into the troat of the leader. The Haimaru Brothers tore out from the bushes, taking down three bandits of their own, and Sakura jumped down onto the shoulders of one man, twisting and dropping down with a crunch.

She jabbed a kunai into the thigh of another man, using the leverage to pull her up while yanking the knife deeper. With her other hand, she tossed some shuriken, which she heard make a rather wet sounding thud upon impact.

Hana was grappling with a bandit, but another was sneaking up behind her, bat in hand. Sakura kicked the man that she was fighting in the back and hurled a kunai into the eye of the man behind her.

“Good shot,” Hana huffed out, pulling the man’s wakizashi from his holster and shoving it down into his chest. She pulled it out and proceeded to cut down the last remaining man.

“I think I might owe you something for that save,” Hana leered, wiping down the blade and tucking it into the sheath that she took from the man’s body, “Let me know if you ever wanna go out for drinks or something.”

Sakura’s hair was dyed a brownish-red by the blood that soaked her entire body, but as she looked up into the hazy red sky, crowned in moonlight, she laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe that I started this series to try and write smut? And then I got so uncomfortable sitting on my home computer too early in the morning after not sleeping and drinking and then I also realized that Sakura was supposed to be like, 13 in part 1 so I both stopped trying to add smut and like, aged her up a bit. Because I wrote the beginning like a year ago and the make-out bits the next year, and I forgot what time I set it in. Tbh everyone's talking about being horny as hell in quarantine but I'm not feeling it. Is it because I'm barely surviving rn? Maybe. I eat 1 meal per day and it's instant ramen and soda.
> 
> Lmk if you want another Sakura ship? I have some lined up, where I'll actually try to write smut, but like, I'm baby. But I'm legal so it's fine.
> 
> Uh the basic premise of this series is that Sakura becomes a bounty hunter instead of becoming Tsunade's apprentice, and t details her growth as a person in a different direction, but also while she sleeps with a lot of people. Fun.


End file.
